A NATION CHALLENGED: THE EXILED RULER

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE EXILED RULER; Backers Seek a Role for Ex-King

By MELINDA HENNEBERGER

Published: December 23, 2001

ROME, Dec. 22—
Those around the 87-year-old former king of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir Shah, who has spent nearly three decades in isolated exile here, want to see him take on more than a symbolic role in rebuilding their country. Some even speak of restoring the monarchy.

''I think people are still attached to the monarchy,'' the king's cousin and former military commander, Gen. Abdul Wali, said in an interview. ''I'm one of those people, and there are others like me, who want him to play an active role during a period of transition.'' He described that role ''as the national leader or head of state.''

The reclusive Zahir himself, however, rebuffs any suggestion of restoring the monarchy, and remains noncommittal about what role he might have in rebuilding the country he has not seen since he was overthrown in 1973.

Mostly forgotten before Sept. 11, he has since been taken increasingly seriously as someone with the potential to unite his people. He was their last leader in a time of peace, and his greatest strength has been that he has seemed beyond personal ambition, both because of his temperament and his advanced age.

Soon, he is expected to return to Afghanistan to convene a loya jirga, or tribal council, which will elect a new government. There is also speculation that he may be chosen, not to rule, but to serve as the transitional head of state who would in turn name the head of government, subject to a vote of confidence by the council.

Yet even as he prepares to return to his country, he continues to seem so oddly detached and indifferent, not to his country's fate, but to his own, that it is somewhat difficult imagining him boarding the plane.

He has certainly waged no campaign to bat down persistent questions about his competence to take on anything beyond a symbolic role, though several Western diplomats and one journalist who met him for the first time recently described him as remarkably fit, lucid and even something of a flirt.

For many weeks, aides have been saying, over and over in an endless loop, that His Majesty is ready to return to Afghanistan at a moment's notice. Yes, now he is ready. Yes, now he is really ready.

Yet it is hard to say how the former king himself feels. He has given face-to-face interviews since Sept. 11 only to Newsweek, Vanity Fair and People magazine. He told Newsweek: ''It is not a question of seeking a position. I see my role as a peacemaker.''

To Vanity Fair, the Francophile former monarch, who was schooled in Paris and Nice, said: ''Je n'ai jamais été optimiste.'' (I have never been an optimist.)

He had turned down an invitation to return to his country to try to govern 11 years ago, he explained, because, ''I have always believed that unless I was willing to personally go forward and lead this putsch, that I should not encourage others to do something where a lot of people would lose their lives.''

Ten years ago, a man posing as a journalist pulled a knife on him. But the paralyzing mixture of caution and royal reserve in his reticence have deeper roots. General Wali, his cousin, said the former king did not speak to reporters more frequently because he was bored by saying the same thing over and over.

Certainly the former king has never sought either attention or power. Those who know him best describe him as quiet and kind, an intellectual but often indecisive man who has always been reluctant to lead.

He was a lonely but pampered child who grew into an athletic youth particularly fond of tennis, mountain climbing and horseback riding.

At 16, he married his first cousin.

At 19, in 1933, he was training to become an officer in the Royal Afghan Army when his father, Nadir Shah, was assassinated in front of him while handing out diplomas at a graduation ceremony in the gardens of their palace in Kabul.

''Suddenly, a boy in the crowd pulled a handgun and began shooting,'' said General Wali, who was there. Zahir threw himself on his father's body, weeping and trying to shield him from further bullets, ''but it was too late.''

Within the hour, the young man was proclaimed king.

In the early years, his father's three brothers and various other male relatives held effective control, while he rode the country on horseback, visiting his people and seeking to improve the country's agricultural production by better matching crops to the climate.

His 40-year reign was a time of relative calm, and when he finally came into his own, in the early 1960's, he brought a new measure of democracy to Afghanistan.

During his reign, a new constitution established a Parliament, guaranteed girls an education and women the rights to vote and a place in political life. Women at that time served as representatives and cabinet members, though the new Parliamentary government was wobbly, and a series of governments fell.

Even then, though, there were complaints that the king was too indecisive. ''During a period in which this system must look to him for leadership, he is unsure as to when and how to intervene,'' the American ambassador, Robert Neumann, said in a 1970 cable. ''This indecision has been the foremost obstacle to economic modernization.''

Never a workaholic, either, and was often distracted by his passion for horses and ski holidays. Sometimes, even intimates thought he was just not paying enough attention.

Zahir was on the island of Ischia, off the coast of Naples, consulting a specialist about an eye injury suffered during a volleyball match, when he learned that he had been overthrown.

The coup was engineered by a slighted cousin, with the help of some young communists who paved the way for the Soviet invasion of 1979, and the king took the familial betrayal especially hard.

He never went back to Afghanistan, but while he stayed on in Italy, he never really settled here either. His cousin sent him a $10,000 monthly stipend -- the income from his investments and properties. But when the cousin was killed in a coup before the Soviet invasion, the money stopped, and Zahir Shah was forced to live on a tight budget for a time.

''The King and the Queen don't even have a live-in maid,'' a 1979 report in The New York Times noted. ''An Italian woman comes in every day to do household chores.'' Later, the Saudis began subsidizing him and his entourage, none of whom seems to have a paying job.

His life here has truly been a life of the mind, 28 years spent buried in French novels, painting miniatures, walking in his garden and dreaming of Afghanistan. He has never learned Italian, never socialized, and rarely ventures from his heavily guarded home north of Rome.

Someone who knew him in the late 70's said, ''He was shuffling around in his felt slippers even then,'' like a much older man.

Now, rather than seeking power for himself, he is urging Afghans to unite behind Hamid Karzai, a distant relative and ally, who is the country's new interim leader.

One thing he has never wavered on is ''his sentiment is that monarchy has not existed for 28 years and people have changed,'' General Wali said. ''I do not think that way, but he has wanted to make clear he is not a pretender to the throne, or interested in restoring the monarchy. Or, God forbid, in becoming a politician.''